Free barista coffee, thanks to Sonar

If you're joining us next week (and if not - there's still time to buy tickets) as well as the great technical content, meeting old friends and making new, you'll also enjoy free tea, coffee and a buffet lunch.

The coffee is fine, but bulk-produced, one-size-fits-all, conference coffee will never be a match for hand prepared barista coffee.

So this year we've teamed up with Sonar, "the home of {clean code}", one of our sponsors, who are covering the cost of a free barista coffee every day of the main conference, from the café immediately upstairs from the venue (the venue all lies below street level, built into the cliffs. When you enter at street level you'll be in the café).

So when you arrive and get your conference bag, be sure to check for your three Sonar coffee tokens, as you'll need these to redeem for your free coffee in the café.

Just be mindful that if everyone hits the café at the same time the queue may become unmanageable - so try to choose different times during the day. Remember the trusty conference coffee urns will still be there to keep you going!

Don't drink coffee? Feel free to trade your tokens with someone else. That shouldn't stop you from checking out the static analysis tools that Sonar do.

DeepMind join as Gold Sponsor

We're happy to welcome another Gold Sponsor: DeepMind - part of the Alphabet group.

Maybe you've heard of DeepMind, already, but I'll let them introduce themselves:

We’re a dedicated scientific community, committed to “solving intelligence” and ensuring our technology is used for widespread public benefit.

Our pioneering and collaborative culture is made up of people from unusually diverse backgrounds. Together, we build computer systems that learn how to solve problems and advance scientific discovery for all.

We have a track record of breakthroughs in fundamental AI research, published in journals like Nature, Science, and more. Our programs have learned to diagnose eye diseases as effectively as the world’s top doctors, to save 30% of the energy used to keep data centres cool, and to predict the complex 3D shapes of proteins - which could one day transform how drugs are invented.

More online volunteers required

While we closed our volunteer programme a while ago, due to the restructuring of the online event - and moving it to a week later - we would benefit from a few more volunteers to help online.

This would give you access to the online event for free, and the workload should be light (if we get enough volunteers!)

See the volunteers page for full details and how to apply.